I need a ratty treadmill….

because Sugar has so far managed to lose not a single gram. Bless her.

The Alpha Herbal food finally arrived and is now the base of the shunamite mix and they seem to really like it. Their bowls are empty in the evenings and because of the lack of fresh food i’ve had to put another bowl in the boys cage as they’re eating more dry food.

I think the alpha herbal is a better mix as a ‘kidney friendly’ diet for Treacle and Charlotte. As rats get older most of them have a degree of kidney failure. One way that has been suggested of controlling this is controlling the protein intake by reducing it and providing digestible protein such as eggs and fish. Both Treacle and Charlotte are about 20 months now which is classed as ‘old’ so even though neither of them are showing symptoms I thought it would be good for them to modify the diet. It’s not exactly as recommended in the Scuttling Gourmet book which is detailed here: Kidney friendly rat diet but I do have the recommended cereals in my mix and the dog kibble I use is a fish and rice one (from James Wellbeloved). My next mix will contain the higher proportion of salt crackers and I will need to get some egg noodles. I am not adding the extras at the moment as they are not recommended for younger rats, but I will get some nature diet lite to give them more regularly. Fingers crossed it will help prolong the lives of my two old ladies.